Changeling
by dwead-piwate-meggers
Summary: Freedom for the Commonwealth – the Brotherhood scattered, the Institute fallen and the Minutemen ascendant, with the shadowy figure of the Railroad lurking in the background. Victory! But for Emma, it is hollow, thanks to the echo that had been sent to haunt her.


**03/12/2288 4:37PM**

There was smoke on the wind. Greasy, oily – mechanical, not the woodsy smell of a wildfire. Dirty. The Prydwen was still burning. Sanctuary, Sommerville and Oberland were all reporting that they could smell her. By night, she lit up the horizon like a second dawn. By day, the pall rose up from her corpse like the spectre of Boston's past, haunting the city that burned once again with the fires of war.

Because war? War never changes.

Emma had lived through three of them, now. She knew.

Sitting in the steeple of the Old North Church, knees drawn up to her chest, she watched the smoke rising in the East. In her mind's eye, she could see the Minutemen keeping a careful watch over the blaze, ants crawling around the carcass of a beached fish. Like they'd agreed. Let it burn itself out. Don't let it spread. Save as much of the airport as you can. It was all they could do. Wasn't like the 200 year old extinguishers could be used to put it out. No matter how many they'd collected.

The fires weren't a problem they needed her help solving, anyway. A good thing. She had an inconceivable one of her own. Except it had been conceived. So to speak.

She sighed, digging in her pack, under a mess of circuit boards, scrap aluminium, recorders, lightbulbs and other miscellanies for some cigarettes, a lighter and an ash tray. It was a habit she'd quit sometime after her first pregnancy. But that hardly mattered anymore. Or so she had thought.

And wasn't that the heart of the God-damned problem.

 _Flick-click-fwoosh_. Cigarette lit, she inhaled. Held it. Exhaled slowly, watching her little cloud of smoke drift towards her big one. It grew, shifted, dispersed, scattered by the same wind.

Again.

And again.

Half a cigarette.

This time, on the inhale, there was heard movement on the stairs behind her. Shuffling over the first two. Thud from skipping over the broken third and fourth, to land on the fifth. Used both feet, from the sounds of it. Groan from stepping in the middle of the sixth rather than the far right. Creak from the eleventh from stepping on the left instead of the middle. The door swung wide open with a screech of rusty hinges, and a battered canvas shoe and cuffed denim jean stepped into view.

Deacon. Only subtle when he chose to be.

"So," he took a seat beside her, sunglasses still in place, wig discarded somewhere in the catacombs below. The basket of beers he was carrying clinked softly as he puts in on the floor between them.

"King Arthur's dead, and Mordred with him," He pops the caps off a pair of beers, "And Morgana… Was it Morgana or Morgause who had the kid? I can never remember."

She slides the pack of cigarettes his way, and he hands her one of the beers. "I'm not sure how well that analogy applies to this situation."

"What, because Mordred was older, and Arthur was kind of evil," he mumbles, holding the cigarette between his lips while his hands shield the lighter from the wind. "Or is it the half-siblings, nephew-slash-son thing that's throwing you off?"

She chuckles, a two-note _ha-ha_ , and salutes him with her beer. "Both."

She alternates, not quite one-to-one, not perfectly, but close enough, between drinking the warm beer and smoking what's left of her cigarette, in silence. The cigarette is the first to go, and she stubs out the butt on the ashtray. She figured Deacon would get to his reasons for coming to find her in his own time. It wasn't just for company. Partners they may be, but she'd never seen Deacon do anything without a purpose. Benefits of partnership – she knew the way he thought about as well as she knew her own.

"About your little Mordred…"

The little interloper. Child who was never supposed to be. Who didn't belong. Whose mother warred with his father. Suddenly, the analogy was distressingly apt, round-abouting straight to the heart of the matter. She shot Deacon a sidelong glance. His face was as inscrutable as ever, eyes hidden behind the dark glasses. Still, she'd wager at least one set of power armor that he knew exactly what he was implying.

"Not mine, D." Her voice was steady. Some contribution from law school made it to the wasteland, at least. Yes, her voice was steady, even if her hands weren't, pulling her hair out of its loose ponytail to fly in the breeze.

Bottle held to his mouth, Deacon says, "He thinks he's your son," and takes a swig.

She knows. Shaun, the synth Shaun, the ten-year-old, had been good enough to make that clear, calling her 'Mother' in front of the Railroad's forces. The holotape from _Father_ had told her so. A half-dozen well-meaning members of the Railroad had told her so, 'oh, he's over there,' and 'your son's talking to P.A.M.'

It wasn't their fault. Just like it wasn't the boy's fault.

She had no son.

She'd known that shortly after meeting the director of the Commonwealth's most feared bogeyman, the man they called Shaun, or _Father_. Sometime during her tour of the Institute, _his_ Institute, she'd known. Somewhere, listening to all the little scientists trying to justify the slavery, the kidnappings, the torture. Or trying to hide them in back labs, segregated from the white-washed pristineness, dirty, like the rest of the wasteland aboveground. Yes, she'd finally known something that she'd half-feared for months, hope shrivelling up and crumbling to dust, giving way to grief.

She looked up to the sky. "Kai…" It was the first time she'd had to say it out loud. She inhaled, short and sharp, and tried again. "Kai died sixty years ago."

"Kai?" It sounded more like 'who the hell is Kai?'

"My son."

In her peripheral, Emma saw him move, the slightest twitch of his head and shoulders. Like he'd wanted to look at her, but stopped himself. Like he'd been surprised. He covered it up quickly, turning to the raised beer in his left hand instead. Inspected the label. "Thought his name was Shaun."

She snorted, and took another sip from her own drink. Just like everyone had thought his father's name was Nate. "Legal first name," she explained. "Anti-Chinese meant anyone who looked a bit Asian caught flak. An – my husband was Korean, from Hawaii. Spent our honeymoon there. Wanted to give our baby a Hawaiian name. Didn't want him to get bullied. So, Shaun Kai Park."

She took another swig, "No spot for 'preferred name' on the Vault-Tec paperwork, I guess."

Deacon hummed, thoughtfully. She could practically hear the gears whirring in his head, as if he really was the synth that he had once claimed to be. _Tic_ – _wrong name_. _Tic – says her son is dead_. _Whirr – computing likelihood of wanting this Shaun_. She downed the rest of her beer, guzzling loudly to drown it out.

"He still thinks he's yours, pal." He said, eventually.

She sighed, put the now-empty bottle down. She ran her fingers through her hair, pulling it away from her face, catching it at the back of her neck. "I know."

"So…" What are you going to do about it. He doesn't need to say it. Benefits of partnership – she knew the way he thought about as well as she knew her own.

"I can't do it, D."

He's a good spy, Deacon. One of the best, whatever that meant in this world. He'd already known what she was going to say. He didn't respond, just blew smoke rings out over the street.

"I mean," she continued, scrubbing her face with her hands.

"I mean," she gestured out into the world around them, volume rising as she went "How am I supposed to? You know? Wake up every day knowing he's a copy. A replica put out there to manipulate me. Specifically, to manipulate _me_ into doing what _he_ wanted. Just to see if I would. _'For science!'_ "

 _For science –ience –ence-ence._ It echoes around the square.

She sighs.

"And he's just… He's just there." She gestured again, hands pointed to an invisible source in front of her, as though the child were, in fact, right there.

"Like some horrible fuckin' joke. Ha ha. Everything you hoped for is dead." She continued, voice growing thick, "Ha ha ha. Your husband was murdered and your child was kidnapped, but it's ok, we made you another one. Ha ha fuckin' ha."

"How…" She sniffled, wiping tears away with the heels of her palms, "How in the fuck am I supposed to live with that, D? How in the fuck are you going to make a _kid_ live with that? Like, spend the rest of his with someone he thinks is his mom who just… just fucking hating that he exists at all."

Done, deflated, she rested her chin on her knees and whispered, "It's not fucking fair."

"So," he looks at her, this time, full in the face, sunglasses tipped down so she could see the icy blue of his eyes, "what do we do about him, then?"

Dear, sweet, _pragmatic_ Deacon. What would she have done without him?

"I don't know." Her voice cracks and the tears flow freely. "God help us all, Deacon, I've got no fuckin' clue."


End file.
